Battle Log

• Battle Log
• Page 262

God sure used His christians tonight in preaching the gospel. It was a good night with many conversations being had. A lot of people hearing the true gospel for the first time in thier life. God even brought two new people out to witness tonight, so that was pretty cool, both to meet them and observe them in action.

I chatted a ex-lutheran young man, who did not understand the gospel properly. After explaining the gospel  clearly, that man began to say he was just having trouble believing. Having a little experience recently on this particular issue, I cut to quick and pointed out his loved his sin. He readily admitted that this was what he was having trouble with and the source of his unbelief. He didn't like God judging him. I pointed out how many sins he had committed over the last five years, and there was thousands and thousands. The young man said he would think about it tonight and read his bible.

Glory to God to be used by God, for the glory of God :)

Please pray for those that God used us to witness to tonight. S D G

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Saturday, 12 January 2008

Another week and another battle to fight, as I approached the battlefield of Brisbane city I was rather excited about the outreach. Tonight would be my last night in Brisbane for a few weeks, since I am going to the United Kingdom for two weeks of outreach over there.  

The mall seemed quiet as I made my way to King George Square, but looks have been known to be deceptive. We met as usual, prayed, and read the Bible as a team. Then once 9pm rolled around we were into the mall for the preaching.

Ryan was the first preacher up for the night, this also was his last night, since he will be in Thailand on mission for 5 weeks.

While he was preaching, I was on the Bible table. While I was waiting for people to approach two Korean students came up to me and asked if they could have a Bible in English so that they might learn to improve their language skill. I gladly gave them Bibles, and also gospel tracts. Hopefully, as they improve their language, God would grant them repentance.

At 10:15pm, it was my turn to preach. So I started off by declaring the majesty of God, and then I noticed a couple of people stop to listen. I did a call out and engaged them in open air discussion. It turned out that one of them was an atheist, and he wanted to talk about the existence of God. So engaged him in an apologetic over how we know that there is a God.

An atheist attracts an atheist. All of a sudden I had two atheists, but this second one claimed to have been a Christian before seeing the ‘light'. He wanted to debate over some alleged contradictions in the Bible. I enjoy this kind of debate, because often times many people in the public have these questions, and as ministers of the Word we need to be able to answer their questions.

We covered a lot of ground in regards to the existence of God, and then I got to use my favourite argument against atheism, and that is the argument from morality. For if there is no supreme being then, there cannot be any moral absolutes. The atheists I was dealing with argued that the law gave us morals, yet the law came from peoples morals. I pointed out that was circular reasoning.

By this stage another atheist had joined the mix, so it was me trying to dialogue with three atheist at once. I do have to say that they were all very polite, and they were men who had spent some time thinking about the subject. It is always refreshing to debate someone who knows why they hold to a certain position.

I presented arguments to them from teleology, cosmology, and morality, and slowly the arguments made ground. Finally after realising that since they didn't know everything, there could be evidence for God, they admitted that no longer would they hold to the atheistic world view. Two of them declared themselves agnostic, and took some literature, and the third declared that he now believed in God, and wanted to learn more about Christianity.

During this time two young men were ripping up Bibles and tracts, then throwing them at me as I preached. The ground around me was white like snow from all the destroyed Bibles. The police came and then in front of the people watching the officers made the two men pick up everything, they then issued them a move on order and allowed us to continue.

The night finished strong with many hearing the Gospel. Please be praying for all who heard the truth.

Soli Deo Gloria!
 

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Adversity has a funny way of sharpening your mind for the task at hand. I just watched a TV show called War Lords. It commented on how after Pearl Harbour was attacked, that President Roosevelt became very clear in his determination to see his nation protected from the Nazi and Japanese war forces. Previously he appeared to be vague and not wanting to go to war, but in one day his resolve had changed.

Today was our first week anniversary, since getting arrested by some angry QLD policemen. I got up prepared to preach in first in case they came back, and God used it to get glory for Himself.

A reasonably large crowd came in, and by God's grace alone I was able to preach for a very long time, answering many questions. I can't remember everything that went down, but a great portion of the dialogue with the intrigued crowd was over evolution and its claim to be truth.

I made some mistakes, which my collegue Josh Williamson corrected me afterwards. For which I am very appreciative. The wounds of a friend are faithful, but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful.

I had made the comment that Genesis only makes allowance for incest as the solution to "Where Cain got his wife".. but that if one believed the big bang and evolution of the species.. then beastiality was the actuallity for them. The problem was that the heckler asked me if we came from beastiality, to which I responded, yes. Of course I didn't even notice that I had mishead his question. The crowd seemed lightly humoured, but the truth seemed to have sunk down deep in thier eyes.

It was a good day, and we had Glen Dibben (pastor of Australia and Filipino Bible Baptist Church, MORAYFIELD) visiting and also David Lazenby from Nerang Baptist Church. We enjoyed thier company, and since the weather was bad, we headed for cover and fellowshipped the afternoon in.

Please pray that God will bring Surfers Paradise to life, and that it might become a place of holiness where his name is known.

To God by the glory,

josh mitchell

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I thank God for my big forehead, it protected my eyes from getting sunburt.

Seriously though today, was super sun shiny, and it meant not too many people were stopping to listen to my pleasantly annoying voice.

Keith Rocheford joined my today, which was a real pleasure, he is a super nice guy and an interesting street preacher. He preached on evolution, that thing that makes believing scientists feel like they have monkey breath.

I got to chat to one of Keith's hecklers. He was a dark-skinned fellow called Mohamed, and yes, you guessed it he was an ex-muslim. He was living life "the sin way" and was mixing relativism into his islamic beliefs and took a few pot shots at Jesus Christ the Son of God along the way during our conversation. I found him a nice chap, a little difficult to pin down but he did go through the whole gospel, with a very full explanation, and even why the Koran is not the book of God. Mohomed gave me his word he would read the bible, so I pray the Lord converts his soul, if it pleases Him. Please pray for William his mate also.

Four young girls in bikini's stopped to listen in our crowd, and I we went through the ten commandments. They quietened down after a while, and accepted bibles and tracts afterwards, which was thrilling!

I had one lady who wanted to know why Christ died, which I was very pleased to answer.

We didn't have a lot of people stop today.. but a lot of open hearts. Which is quite a bit different to the last twelve months of Open Air preaching has seen. I noticed a lady with a smirk on her face as I preached on the big dud (the big bang) and why christians have a rational logical basis for thier belief in Jesus Christ (creation to judgement day, and beyond).. I began preaching on death, and how it would reach all of us one day. I preached on how death could hit us at any minute, in a variety of different ways, and how 350 ppl have died on QLD roads in the year of 2007. I preached that death was the one valid reason we have, for striving to find out the truth about where we came from, so we would be certain what we would meet after death. That lady lost her smirk.

It was a great day. My car was overheating something terribly, but I trust God shall provide my needs.

If you are a christian reading this blog, please pray for the coming few weeks: that God will send labourers and resources into the harvest, just like Jesus commanded us to pray. Your prayers ought not to be in vain.

 

For the glory of He who said: "I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death." For JESUS CHRIST,

This blog typed in by one of Jesus's little servants,

josh mitchell

For other good blogs check out:

Josh Williamson - Brisbane City, and for the next few weeks Europe
David & Anna Gee - Europe
Dan Kent - Redcliffe City

Oh and friends can I leave you with a thought: "Don't worry if evangelising will cost you something, worry if you are in rebellion to Christ's command, get right with Christ, your days are numbered by God. If you die in your sin, then all you have to look forward to is the fiery judgement of an angry God. John 3:38"

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Saturday, 5 January, 2008

The day was strange for me, I felt tired, and I felt like doing nothings. So in my ‘wisdom' I decided to go out on the streets, but not preach. One would think that I would learn, but I never do. Whenever I have said ‘no' to preaching, I have always ended out declaring the gospel.

It was good to have Andrew Hsu back from his trip to Taiwan, so since he hadn't preached in awhile I thought it would be good to put him up first. However, this changed when Josh Mitchell arrived on the scene. It was Josh's schedule week off, yet for some strange reason he appeared in the city. So we put him to work right away and got him up on the Brisbane box declaring the gospel.

The night was fairly quiet, and there wasn't many people in the mall. Josh Mitchell did a good job, and then it was time for Andrew to preach. Hsusy got up and declared the gospel in his normal fashion. But I didn't get to hear all that much of his message since I was in a one to one conversation behind the preacher.

At around 10:45pm, Andrew thought it to be good to make me preach for the night, I tried every excuse to avoid preaching, but Andrew wouldn't buy it. So I got up thinking that it was a quiet night, so I will do a ten minute message then stand down. But God had other plans...

I was going to do my "Booze Sermon" based on Proverbs 20:1, but before I could get into it, I had a couple of hecklers opening up on me. So I dealt with them to the best of my ability. Yet as any preacher knows, a heckler is a magnet for more hecklers.

As I finished with the first two hecklers I got fired upon by a young man who had many questions and statements in regards to the hypothesis of evolution. This topic interests me from an apologetic mindset, so I engaged him on that topic. But like most people who hold to evolution, this man didn't realise that there is a lack of evidence when it comes to macro evolution.

Every time I would ask for evidence he would avoid the questioning, or change topics. During this time another regular heckler was standing beside me yelling abuse at myself, and blaspheming God.

The crowd was growing as the debate raged over Creation and Evolution. I particularly like dealing with this topic, since it is so easy to swing from Creation into the fall, and then into personal sin. From there it is but a small jump to declare the Gospel.

Mr. Evolution would only cite his year eleven biology book as evidence, but he wouldn't tell me what part of the book supported evolution, nor would he tell me what evidence the book presented.

The crowd had given birth to other hecklers, so I was busy trying to deal with four people yelling at me all at the same time. Upon being asked to wait there turn three of them agreed, however, the fourth would not.

The questioning then turned to "how do we know Christianity is true?" They also stated that it was just made up by a few guys who wanted to make a quick dollar. So again we entered into the apologetic realm and answered the questions in regards to that. Then as the hecklers have done in week previous, they asked about the historical Jesus, and if there was any evidence for Him. I do find it quite amazing that these questions always appear, and no matter where one preaches a heckler has to ask that question.
I built the historical case for Christ, but the vile young man next to me wouldn't accept it. I pointed out to him that non-Christian historians actually record about Christ, and that they all had bias against Christianity, yet he wouldn't accept history.

He then started to do his ‘apologetic' to the crowd that had gathered. He tried to make the case that if he believed his shoes to be alive, and if he wrote a book about it. Then would that become a religion, and would that become truth? I replied to him that it may cause some people to worship his shoes, however, it wouldn't make it true. Moreover, I stated, it would be highly improbably that your opponents would write historical accounts saying  that your shoes are alive. Yet the opponents of Christianity wrote about Christ Jesus.

By now a young islander named Ricky appeared on the scene, I had already spoken to him earlier in the night, so I engaged him in the gospel. The crowd listened, as I explained the love of God towards sinful humanity, and how we didn't deserve mercy. As I spoke you could see the conviction in the eyes of Ricky. Yet, throughout my talking to him, people tried to drag him away. He stayed firm and listened to the whole gospel, and thanked me for presenting it. - Please pray for him!

By now it was after midnight, so I wrapped it up. A few people took in-depth tracts, so pray that God will use the gospel presented tonight to change their hearts.

As I was packing up I was approached by Mr. Evolution, who wanted to talk more about Creation and evolution. So we discussed that to a deep level, and I made the case for the existence of God from a morality view point. Sadly the man couldn't see his own circular reasoning, it is always hard to witness to a blind man who wishes to stay blind. But we can rejoice in the fact that God is the Sovereign one in all matters.

Sunday, 6 January, 2008

The heart rate was up, and the nerves were pumping as we made our way to the Gold Coast. Exactly one week ago we were arrested for witnessing, but we knew we had to return to preach once again.

The weather was threatening, but for a time it held off. Josh Mitchell was the first and only preacher of the day, and God blessed the gospel with bringing in some of the largest crowds we have seen on the Gold Coast.

I was on the camera and I was expecting the police to appear at any time, and at one point a police officer stopped, looked at the crowd and then kept walking.

After an hour of preaching, the heavens opened up and God sent forth the rain. Many of the listeners wanted to learn more, so they took good in-depth gospel tracts.

Tuesday, 8 January, 2008

Each year in January, the large Pentecostal youth movement "Planet Shakers" roles into town. And each year thousands of youth attend the event in order to ‘party for God'. In the past I have worked as security at these events, but the things I saw as a guard, made me realise that we needed a Gospel witness in the place.

I arrived at 1pm, and met up with Keith and Josh Mitchell. Since I was known to the security it didn't surprise me to see that they were already watching me and following me, while I was at the event.

We decided that we would head across to the Southbank parklands, and do some witnessing over there, while the conference delegates were on break. When we arrived I did a Way of the Master radio interview with a youth pastor for a Salvation Army church. He knew the Gospel, but he couldn't verbalise it, so we helped him to the best of our ability to understand how to present the gospel in a clear and logical fashion.

After this, we decided we wanted to hand out some tracts, since the youth were not getting a biblical message inside, but rather they were getting from the conference preachers, nothing but false assurance and demonic lies.

We started to hand out tracts, and many of the youth thanked us for the tracts, and many even stopped to talk.

Now you need to picture this, we are on public property, away from the convention centre where the event is being held. Then from around the corner we are approached by a group of Planet Shaker security guards, who come to complain about us witnessing. They formed a circle around me, and tried to intimidate me to stop witnessing, so I pointed out to them that since we are on public property they can't actually stop us. This caused one of the security guards to snatch a tract out of my hand, and start to call me a hypocrite. I asked why I was a hypocrite, and he stated: "Because you say there are none good, yet claim to be good". I replied that I did not claim to be good, and nor would I even claim such thing, since after all the scripture says we have all sinned, and none of us do good.

He declared that he didn't like what I was saying, and I replied that he didn't like the Bible then. He just laughed and said that he was a Christian, and what I was saying is lies. So I asked him what part was lies. He couldn't answer but just spoke about how they are true and we are wrong.

Before I could respond, I was approached by Mark Penny, who is one of the top guys from Planet Shakers. I only know Mark from last year, when he tried to stop our witnessing, but in the end agreed to let us continue.

This year he and I chatted about general things, and then he encouraged us to keep up the good work. He then left stating that we could hand out tracts outside the venue. I later found out that the security guard that was with him told everyone that we are JW's.

That night we decided to go into the free night session to see what was happening in the realm of Pentecostal youth. To be perfectly honest I was sickened by what I saw. The band whipped the crowd into an emotional frenzy, then Russel Evans got up and told everyone to listen to him, and got the crowd doing waves around the auditorium.

After this they had some slower ‘worship' songs, that always seem to focus on ‘me' instead of God. After the crowd was all emotionally stirred up, it was time for the offering. The man doing the offering, told us that if we want to give our heart to Jesus, then we need to give in the offering. Since where our treasure is, there is our heart.

He then went on to use the Creation account to prove that God wants you to create space in your wallet, so that He can fill it with money. Then he promised healing, wealth etc to all those who obeyed.

I was outraged, how could a thief be allowed into the pulpit, how could a money hungry charlatan be allowed to minister to so many people. The only verse running through my mind was 2 Peter 2:3.

After the showmanship was over the ‘evangelist' Reggie Dabbs, came out and did another show to the people, and started the chant of "bye, bye, bye, bye" and we were told to say this to all our hurt and pain. He then declared that we should say "shut the front door" when pain tries to come back to us.

The message he preached, was nothing more than psychological dribble. He spoke about Jesus Christ coming to help you with your sorrows, and how He came to make you feel better. This is NOT the Biblical gospel! If Jesus wanted to make you feel good He could have sent you a hallmark card, He didn't have to die! The Gospel is about God saving sinners who don't deserve mercy. Yet Planet Shakers seem to miss that point.

I was heart broken as thousands stood to pray the prayer of "bye, bye, bye, bye".

Thursday, 10 January, 2008

Today we returned to Planet Shakers, since thousands of youth were getting a false gospel, we knew we had to do something to make sure they understood the true gospel.

We began by handing out tracts, thousands were going out, and many pastors were coming back and thanking us for the tracts that we had given out. People even wanted to pray for us, since they were excited to see people declaring the gospel.

But then... two of the top Planet Shakers organisers approached, and one of them lied to Keith, and then tried to snatch all the tracts off him. Keith pointed out that we were on public property and that he couldn't do that. The man then assaulted Keith by grabbing him, and again Keith warned him that was assault. The man just ignored, and told him that he would make us move.

The other Planet Shaker leader then began to yell at all the youth that they shouldn't take these tracts, since they are wrong and the message on them is not true. I replied that we were not a cult, but rather we are from Baptist churches, and that the message on the back is from the Bible. The youth stopped, and didn't know which way to go, so I called out "get the information that Planet Shakers doesn't want you to have!" This resulted in many youth eagerly taking tracts. The first leader then started to take them of the youth as they walked past, so I went and circled behind him, and gave them tracts again. This made him keep moving further and further back until he realised that we outnumbered him, and that he could not stop the gospel tracts.

A bunch of youth swallowed the lies of the false prophets from Planet Shakers, and began to rip up the tracts saying that the message was false, yet when questioned on which part is false they could not answer.

After awhile, I went and spoke to the first Planet Shakers leader, and asked him what part of the message does he disagree with. He was stunned, so I asked him "why do you hate the gospel?" He replied that he didn't and that he did agree with what the tract said, this led to me asking him "why then did you try and stop the youth from having it? All you have done is created a situation in their mind where they now believe the gospel to be false!"

The man apologised, and was sorry for trying to stop the gospel. He stated that he agreed with all the tracts message, and that he also believed that message to be truth. He then apologised to Keith for lying and assaulting him.

I must say, that based on the fruit that Planet Shakers produce, then I would have to declare them as nothing more than an anti-Christian, anti-Gospel, religious party. In which the Bible is not respected, but rather the words of the leaders are taken as truth.

"Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown intothe fire. Thus you will recognize them by their fruits. - Matthew 7:15-20 (ESV)

Soli Deo Gloria!

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We went out witnessing in the cold of Fargate again this weekend. Both of us are mostly over our colds now but Anna has got a bronchitis which makes witnesing in the cold difficult. John joined us for the afternoon which was a great encouragement. John was already hard at it with a couple of muslim ladies and a catholic guy when we arrived so we got stuck in with handing out tracts.

I ran into one of the goths that we have spoken to several times Aaron, he has been very strongly opposed to the gospel when we have spoken with him before. This afternoon Aaron told me that he had been thinking a lot about the gospel and had been reading the new testament we'd given him a couple of weeks back! Praise God!

We then went up to the peace gardens and discussed the things of eternity with the Goths that were there, Anna and John got to have some good conversations with them. I discussed sin and it's consequences with Kelly but she left still rejoicing in the temporary pleasures of her sin and I left praying for God to remove her blindness and save her soul from hell.

So many of these young people are involved in lifestyles of shocking sinfulness. While God condemns equally the "ordinary" sin (if there is such a thing before God!) of those like myself; it is a testimony to the evil taught to these children that they are so embracing sin. May God one day punish the wicked people, who for the sake of money and prestige not only do wickedness but encourage these others to do likewise, applauding them when they do! It is truely said:

We went into the mall and Anna preached the Gospel of hope to the crowds in the mall. May God use her preaching. As we were all cold at this point we went indoors to warm up at mcdonalds. After warming up John and I went out and preached once more. During my preaching Jamie stopped to talk and I engaged him in the good person test, Jamie recognised his sin but would not admit that God would be right to condemn him for it. I reasoned with him for a time and as he left I gave him a tract and we pray that God would use the truth he heard to good effect. A couple of goths also stopped to heckle but the didn't really want to know the answer to their questions and so left quickly.

We pray that God would graciously use us in His harvest and through His mighty word would save some of those who hear.

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Preacher forced to knees, and marched off by QLD Police

Wow what a day. It was raining on the Gold Coast and the surf was in turmoil. Waves, rips, loads of sand being thrown up in the waves. Gale force winds were approaching and the water was the highest on the beach, it had been for a long time. Considering it was wet weather, the beach front, because of its unusual nature, was bringing heaps of people out to watch. Which made our preaching job easier.

I jumped up to preach first, and had a few breif discussions with some interesting people. One family man accussed christians of being paedofiles, to which I responded that Christ taught: Mat 18:6  But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.

He also made the claim there was no God, but could not support his claim. I responded with proof of the existence of God. One lady who came into the crowd after this came in, and told me to be quiet. Saying I had shouldn't tell people what to think. Which I though (privately), was both hypocritical and an attempt to take away the civil freedoms we have in this great nation of Australia to speak freely in a public space.

The Australian Constitution in Chapter Five, Section 116 says: "Commonwealth not to legislate in respect of religion.The Commonwealth shall not make any law for establishing any religion, or for imposing any religious observance, or for prohibiting the free exercise of any religion, and no religious test shall be required as a qualification for any office or public trust under the Commonwealth." {Emphasis mine}

I love that phrase "Dieu et - mon droit", french for "God, and my right"

I stepped down, and Ryan Hemelaar got up to preach. He preached for a good bit, but the rain was coming down hard, and I could see no observers except Josh Williamson. So Ryan jumped up and I sent the team to cover, and to move to Phase Two of wet weather Evangelism.

Leaving bags with one man, Ryan and I took off to hand tracts out down the mall, and as soon as it was dry, we headed back to the preaching spot. The other boys were already bringing our bags, which was fantastic. We decided to stay, even if it rained this time.

Josh Williamson was first up this time, and he also did a fine job preaching. After he finished his sermon on humanities absolute end: death. He passed the baton to me, to preach the gospel in. I always love preaching with Josh Williamson, since he reads a lot, and this gives him a good share of knowledge and answers for the public's "questions for", and "objections to" Jesus Christ as the only Saviour from God's wrath at man's sin.

By God's grace I preached the gospel, and then proceeded to dialogue with a few people. At this point it had been raining for about ten minutes, and some young men I was talking too, had stayed in the rain, as they must have found the subject interesting. It was at this time that two officers of the Queensland Police, arrived and commanded me to step down, and as I did so, they forced me to my knees, and held and locked my arms out 90 degrees to my body. I will release the details of what ensued, after we have completed our official media release, and we are aware that the Queensland Crime and Misconduct Commission are working on the incident.

What I can say, is that David Lazenby and Tania Shliahov was able to hand out many many tracts, simply because the police treated me the way they did. To God be the glory, great things he hath done. I bow to Jesus Christ, who has all power in heaven and in earth. David Lazenby is a local member of the our Gold Coast team, and he is a member of the local independant baptist church "Nerang Baptist Church".

For the glory of God alone,

May the Lamb that was slain, recieve the reward of His suffering,

josh mitchell

 

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The sense of the festive season was still in the air as I arrived in Brisbane City for our weekly Operation 513 outreach. As I walked through the Queen Street Mall, I noticed that it wasn't all to busy, and that few people were hanging around. I presumed that it may have been due to the fact that in two more nights the city would be full due to the New Year Eve celebrations.

The team met in our normal spot in King George square for a time of prayer and thanksgiving to our Heavenly Father, then after prayer we spent some time as a group reading through the Scriptures. It was good to have some old friends from Sydney with us tonight as we ministered the Word.

At 9pm we made our way to the Queen Street Mall, and began to set up for the outreach. It was then that I decided that I would be the ‘strike' preacher, that is, the first preacher of the night. Normally I don't like going first, since my preaching style plays a lot of hecklers, and the first preacher of the night normally gets not many hecklers.

I started off by talking about how in a couple of nights people will make New Year resolutions, and how many people will break their resolution within hours of making it. Then I asked how many people would make the New Years resolution of "I will not die in 2008!".

From there I asked the question of ‘How many people died in the past year?' and ‘Are you assured of surviving 2008'? By God's grace a crowd began to gather, so I then opened up the Scripture and gave the crowd a biblical perspective of life from James 4:13-14:

"Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit"- yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes." (ESV)

Then I established with the crowd, that we could die at any moment, and it did not matter how old one was. Once people were thinking about death, and thinking about eternity, then I spoke about why we die, and how originally there was no death, but through sin and rebellion against God, sin passed to all people.

I had a couple of hecklers during this time, and they brought up one of the most ask questions that we have had in recent weeks, and that was the question of "prove there was a historical Jesus". I have enjoyed these questions, since it has made me study more the historical documents outside of the Bible that testify to the life and death of Jesus Christ.

After I stood down from preaching I had a good conversation with a young man who was an intellectually. He was really interested in knowing more about the historical Jesus, so I spent some time doing a bit of an apologetic work with him, and then brought it back to the Lord Jesus Christ, and how He only is the only one who can save sinners.

The rest of the night was fairly quiet until just before midnight, when a drunk Irishman decided to start abusing and threatening Josh Mitchell as he preached. So I moved into position behind Josh Mitchell to give any support if the situation got violent. The Irish man saw me, and then started to threaten me and generally abuse me. I was happy to let him threaten me since he was allowing the preacher to continue without interruption.

While he was yelling at me he did hit me once in the stomach, so I warned him if he did that again then I would get the police. He apologised, but then denied hitting me. After about ten minutes passed he started to hit me again, so this time I grabbed his arm and pushed him of me. He then started to shout that I assaulted him, so I sent one of our guys down to the get the police. The police arrived, and arrested the Irish man. I must commend the members of the Queensland Police in Brisbane for doing a fine job in tough situations!

Sunday, 30 December, 2007

The news reported gale force winds, and heavy rain for the Gold Coast, but we decided that we would still go out and witness to those who went to the beach to see the six metre high surf.

Upon arrival it was raining, so Josh Mitchell and Ryan started handing out tracts while Dave and I kept an eye on the teams equipment. Once the rain stopped we noticed the crowd rush to the beach front, so we went to where we normally preach and began to declare the gospel.

Josh Mitchell and Ryan Hemelaar went first, and they preached even though we were being pounded by strong winds, and sand being blown from the beach. A few people stopped to listen, and a couple even heckled. After about twenty minutes the heavens opened up and the rain began again. So once again we took cover, after about five minutes of rain it stopped so again we went back to the beach front.

This time it was my turn to preach, so I jumped up and preached from Hebrews 9:27, and how it is appointed for us to die once and then judgment. A small crowd gathered, and a heckler opened up on me saying that there was no historical evidence for Jesus. So as I did the night before I made an apologetic argument for the historic Jesus Christ.

It was hard preaching in gale force winds, so after about twenty minutes, I tagged Josh Mitchell in to preach. He was preaching for about ten minutes when it began to rain again, but this time we kept preaching, and there were four young men sitting on a seat listening to the gospel, and they were asking some good questions.

Let me set the scene for you. Picture one preacher, addressing four listeners. Behind the preach stood Ryan and I. It was onto this scene that things got nasty.

As I stood behind Josh Mitchell I noticed two Queensland police officers approach us. By the way they came towards us we knew they were coming to speak to us. However, speaking seemed to be the furthest thing from their mind.

They split up and went either side of Josh Mitchell, and as they did this I noticed the rank of a Sergeant and a Constable. They then both grabbed an arm of Josh Mitchell and pulled him down from preaching and forced him to his knees.

At no stage had they said about any law being broken, but they just decided to bring the preacher down. Josh Mitchell complied with their forceful actions, and as they stood him up I noticed that in his left hand, he was still gripping the Bible. The police turned to Ryan and I and asked if we were with him. We answered that we were so they ordered us to follow them to the Cavill Avenue police station.

Josh Mitchell was restrained the whole distance of the walk from the beach front to the police station, and we were all at a lost to what was going on.

Upon arrival at the station Josh Mitchell was taken into the holding area while Ryan and I waited in the waiting room. Before they took Josh away he requested that I come with him to be his witness for the interview. This got be pushed in the chest by the Sergeant and then yelled at.

Once the Sergeant and Josh Mitchell had gone I turned to the Constable who was not behind the front counter and I asked him for his name and details. The officer refused, and would not say anything. So I asked again, this time he gave me his name and rank. I then proceeded to ask for the Sergeants name, and all the constable would say is "his name is Sergeant".

I was also ignored by him when I asked what law we had broken. Since the police were not being forthcoming in what we had actually done wrong, I said that I would be making a formal complaint. And I began to write some notes down in my note book. It was then that I got the greatest shock of the whole situation.

While my back was turned the Constable came out from behind the counter and grabbed me by the neck and upper arm and slammed me into the wall. I called out that this was assault and he replied "Tough!" He then dragged me by my neck further into the station at the same time yelling "You're under-arrest!"

I was then manhandled down the hall way into the holding area where I was reunited with Josh Mitchell. None of us resisted what was going, but we were both breaking that God's will be done.

Since I was under-arrest, I asked for a lawyer, and it was then that the police became rather abusive and made offensive sexual comments towards us. During this whole time they never once told us what law we had broken, however, they did make many offensive comments against Christianity.

For about fifteen minutes we were in the holding area, and finally the Sergeant changed and became a lot more friendly. He told us that he would release us without charge, and that we could go free. But he still wouldn't say what we had done wrong. We were however, ordered to leave that part of the Gold Coast or be arrested again.

We left the area and straight away began to write our notes out so that we had an accurate record of what happened. We also took the time then to make a formal complaint to the Crime and Misconduct Commission, who are now investigating.

Please pray for the conversion of those two Queensland Police officers, and that God will get the Glory!

Monday, 31 December, 2007

New Years eve! As we have done for the past two years we went to the big city party in Brisbane city, not to party with them, but to declare the Words of Eternal life.

Josh Mitchell was the first and only preacher of the night. He went for well over one and a half hours, and the whole time a large crowd was gathered. Then as the midnight hour approached we got ready to preach as the people began to leave. All our tract reserves ran out that night as hundreds of people got the gospel.

2007 is finished, and 2008 is beginning. Pray that God will be glorified all the more in the New Year!

Soli Deo Gloria!

 

 

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Redcliffe (QLD) Team

Just a quick note today.

Getting out there at 2pm to find that there was not very many people at all, wasn't to bad but getting out of the car to find that if you weren't holding on to somthing you would most likely get blown over with the strength of the wind because of the low in the whether patten just off the coast. 

But sill moved around triing to yell through the wind with the 1-1's with no luck. Untill then I get a call from Dave whos at the gold coast telling me that Josh Mitchell and Josh Williamson had been taken away by the police. So I went straight back to my car and sat and prayed untill further notice, 10mins later Dave calls again saying that all was fine and they had been released back into the community.

Knowing that there was not much chance of tracting now as the wind picked up and the rain was starting to fall. I decided to visit that pastor of First Settlement Baptist Church to let him know how thing were going.

After that just headed home then off to church for the night.

Interested in comeing out to the Redcliffe for one - one witnessing every Sunday from 2-4pm

send me an e-mail. dank@operation513.com

God Bless
Go serve your King

Dan Kent

(Redcliffe Team)

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God gave us grace and courage to witness.  Mekail joined us for support.  Chris from Chester was out preaching.  Praise God for his labour in the harvest.  May the Word go out in truth and fullness with boldness.  May the Holy Spirit convict of sin, righteousness and judgement, granting faith and repentance.

It was cold, rainy and windy.  We gave out tracts and David preached.  An older gentleman stopped to heckle, he holds himself to be a christian yet calls Jesus a liar, believes that the bible has many errors, and says that everyone will go to heaven. 

Stopping this converation I began to talk with a group of four young people, Tivin was happy to do the good person test. We discussed his position before God and I had the glorious opportunity of sharing the good news of Jesus' death and resurrection. He confessed that he needs to be saved and that he wanted to trust in Jesus. I encouraged him to trully repent and have faith, then to go on to live a life that honours his Lord.

I wrapped up and we finished at that point and headed for home. May God get the glory of saved souls.  May He draw many to him.

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